


The Shadows That Run Alongside Our Car

by AdorabloodthirstyKitty



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Cancer, Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 03:50:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7919404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdorabloodthirstyKitty/pseuds/AdorabloodthirstyKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>based on the game of the same name: https://loxrain.itch.io/shadows<br/>and jack's playthrough of it here: https://youtu.be/jagMRrS8IQQ</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Shadows That Run Alongside Our Car

**Author's Note:**

> based on the game of the same name: https://loxrain.itch.io/shadows  
> and jack's playthrough of it here: https://youtu.be/jagMRrS8IQQ

You sit in the passenger seat of your dad's car, the survivor you met a couple days ago driving beside you. He's silent, though he looks over at you from time to time, as if expecting you to say something, wanting to break the silence.

You're too tired for it right now.

You sit, side by side, as the sun throws red and orange light over the empty expanse of the highway, and you wish the sun would stay up forever. They always come out in the dark.

"I know it's a little late to be askin this but.. what's yer name?" your companion asks, bright eyes finding yours briefly before turning back to the road.

"Mark."

He nods, eyes trained on the horizon and the lonely highway, lit only by the last rays of sunset slowly sinking behind the curve of the earth.

"I'm Jack. Well, Sean. But everyone always called me Jack."

He goes quiet again, looking subdued. You wonder if anyone he used to know is still out there, searching for him.

"Are you from here? America, I mean. I noticed your accent," you pander off, Jack smiling crookedly beside you.

"I'm from Ireland. Came out here for a change of pace, yeh know? What about you?"

"I'm American. I used to live out in Hawaii but we moved to Ohio when we were little and never left."

"We?"

"Me, my brother, my parents. I never really left until after all this."

"Yeah, can't really afford to be stayin in one place nowadays, huh?"

"Yeah, no kidding," you reply, smiling wryly as you turn to look out the window again, every shadow a threat as you roll the window down, letting the wind whip at heated skin as silence falls between you both again.

Your stomach throbs with pain again and you try to hide the wince of pain, not wanting to worry him. He doesn't notice, and you're grateful that he doesn't, even if it leaves you feeling guilty beyond belief.

Silence falls over you both again, stifling and heavy, but your mind has already wandered to your family, to your mother and Thomas. To your dad.

You swallow past the lump in your throat, staring out the window as the sky slowly changes from soft oranges and pinks to a dark red. You don't know how much time passes, but finally Jack speaks again, quieter than before.

"Pretty quiet out here."

"Yeah, guess there's not a lot happening at the end of the world," you reply mildly, meaning it as a joke that falls flat in the quiet, the truth in the words killing the lighter tone you were hoping for.

Another silence, shorter this time.

"You think there are any radio stations left?" you ask, Jack seeming surprised by the question.

"I'd be surprised if there were," he replies. You nod, but lean forward anyway, turning the radio on and turning the dial slowly as you listen for a melody between static. All you hear is static, but soon enough Jack pipes up again.

"Hold on, go back a second," he says, head perked up as you frown, turning the dial back slowly as you listen for whatever he heard. More static rings out before you hear something, stopping to listen before a melody rings out in the car.

"Is that.. mariachi?" Jack asks, thick eyebrow raised. A smile creeps across your face, blown away by the ridiculousness of it all. Of course mariachi music would be playing during a zombie apocalypse.

"Pft."

You look over as Jack snorts out a laugh, his smile sudden and bright in the dying light of the sun. Both of you grin, shoulders shaking in quiet laughter at the absurdity of it all. It takes a few minutes for both of you to calm down, the sudden laughing fit breaking some of the tension that had weighed heavily on you both before, two strangers trying to survive together.

"That was not what I was expecting. Who the hell's out there running this, anyway?" Jack grins, offering you a smile before his eyes slide back to the road ahead.

"Of all the music that could be left.." You grin, shaking your head. Jack sighs out of his nose, still smiling.

 It's quiet again, both of you in better spirits for now before you realize the song is still going. Or that it's started over again, most likely. Of course it would be on an endless loop. You voice the thought, Jack agreeing absently as he drives.

"What do you think a zombie would even listen to?" he asks, and you smile as you reply. 

"Is death metal too obvious an answer? Rob Zombie? Or maybe they'd be more into Babymetal these days," you grin, earning another crooked smile from your companion.

"I dunno. I think the Grateful Dead seems more apt," he smiles easily. You grin. Who knew that you would be making zombie puns with an Irishman during the zombie apocalypse?

The mariachi track continues, tinny horns the only sound for a few minutes before Jack shuts it back off. You kind of miss it, but the quiet is comfortable.

Jack is silent for a few more minutes, smile falling away before he speaks again.

"Did you ever think anything like this would happen?" he asks, surprising you with the sudden shift in conversation. Your smile falls.

You pause, and change the subject.

"It’s getting dark out."

".. Yeah. Glad the sun's stayed this long. It always sucks driving out here without the streetlights."

You nod, watching the occasional brush whizz by as you drive over an empty road, dark and silent.

"What did you used to do, anyway? Before all this?"

Your eyes fall to your lap. "Work, mostly. I helped provide for my mom and dad, so I started working pretty young. Ended up with a couple jobs, working any hours I could to help out. Just get up, go to the first job, take a break, go to the second, and crash when I got home again. I didn't have much time for anything else."

He nods, frowning.

"I wouldn’t be able to handle that," he says, eyes faraway as he continues driving.

"What did you used to do?" you ask, and he shrugs slightly.

"Not a lot, to be honest. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I ended up travelling a lot, getting work wherever I could for enough money to get by on."

"Is that how you ended up here?"

"Yeah. I'd been hitchhiking the States for a year or so when it all went to shit. I was somewhere in the middle of the country, surrounded by farms when it happened. Didn't reach me for months, but when it did I got the first car I could find and booked it outta there. Kinda sucked not knowing how to drive, but empty roads are perfect for practicing," he smiles, your eyes widening at the admission.

"You don’t know how to drive?"

"Not really. I know the basics, how to make it stop and go. That's about all I needed when there wasn't anyone else on the road with me. Traffic laws aren't really as strict during the apocalypse, I guess," he grins, a smile finding it's way on your face.

Another silence falls between you, the pain in your stomach returning. It throbs and you can't hide the wince as you press your hand to your abdomen, trying to be discreet.

"Still feeling nauseous?"

Jack is watching you, eyes flickering between the road and you, a sympathetic frown etched into his features.

"Yeah. It had gotten better for a while there," you reply, taking a breath before removing your hand, not wanting him to worry.

"I'm just exhausted, which doesn't help things," you continue, ignoring the throbbing pain, Jack's eyes flickering back to you again.

"Do you want to stop and rest?" he asks, obviously concerned. You wonder how you got so lucky to meet someone so kind at the end of the world.

You look to the fuel gauge, only a quarter tank left. You shake your head.

"Nah. We'll be stopping soon anyway, like it or not. Pulling over would just waste more gas."

He nods. "Onwards it is, then."

Silence again as the sun sinks lower, the light of sunset replaced by the inky blue of night. You keep your eye on the road ahead to keep your mind from wandering to the pain in your stomach. The silence only seems to bring back memories, though. Memories or the people you left behind, the people you didn't save.

"Do you ever wonder.. why us? How did we, out of all these people in the world, make it this far? Do we even deserve it?"

"We're here. That's what matters. The how and why aren't important. What's important is that we made it this far, that we're here and safe," he replies evenly, reassuring you. You take a breath, working up the courage to tell him your story. He deserves that, at least.

"... When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke. I thought maybe someone was changing the news articles, hacking into the websites and writing about a zombie outbreak to be a smartass. I kept waiting for it to change back, but it never did."

Jack is silent beside you, though you see him nod his head in your peripheral.

"I just kept working, waiting for someone to laugh it off while I helped Mom and Dad."

Another pause, Jack's chest rising and falling with a small sigh.

"Listen, you don't have to answer if you don't want to but, your family, your parents.. what happened?"

You pause, pushing back the threat of tears as you take another deep breath. You stare out the window as you finally speak.

"My dad had cancer before any of this started. It had gotten to the point where he was pretty much bedridden. Between the doctors and treatments we didn't have much time for anything else, especially my mother. She took him to all his appointments, took care of him while I tried to earn enough to pay for the medical bills.

Dad was getting worse. My mom went out searching for a doctor we would go to sometimes, ended up finding him in our town. She didn't realize he was a zombie until it was too late."

You pause, swallow past the tightness of your throat, choked by unshed tears.

"They turned her before she even had a chance to get away. My brother saw the whole thing, ran to my work to warn me. He didn't realize dad was still home, alone and unguarded. They got to him, too, before either of us got back."

You still remember the look on Thomas's face when you ran into the house, your father groaning and snapping at the both of you as he watched you with dead eyes, still confined to his bed.

"I killed him. I grabbed the baseball bat we would play with when we were kids and I killed him. Thomas and I left town after that, but he left me one night without a word. I think he still felt guilty for leaving dad alone," you finish, hands clenching into fists on your lap as you blink away tears.

 You flinch, surprised when a warm hand rests on top of yours, squeezing lightly. Jack looks from the road to you, blue eyes wide and earnest.

"We're still here. Just remember that. Things might never get better, we can't assume they will. But while we're still breathing, there's hope."

A short silence falls between you both, his hand still resting on top of yours, squeezing lightly.

"I'm sorry. For your family, for you. You did the right thing, even if it may not feel that way, but I'm sorry you had to go through it."

You feel warm tears slide down your face, wiping them away with your free hand, the weight of Jack’s hand reassuring as it rests on yours. You nod your head in thanks, still too choked up to speak.

The pain in your abdomen flares again, guilt twisting your stomach and making you feel even worse. You need to tell him.

"Jack, I-"

You're cut off when the engine gives out, the fuel gauge completely empty as the car rolls to a slow stop in the middle of the deserted highway.

"I really hoped the gas would last longer than that," you say instead, swallowing your confession and letting it sit heavy in your chest.

"Bound to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it?" he asks. You nod.

"How far do you think the next gas station is?" he asks, squinting out the window to search for any sign of one.

 _Too far_ , you can't help but think, guilt still churning your already throbbing stomach.

"... Hey. How fast do you think you can run?"

"About average, I guess. Do you think we should?"

You feel even worse, his blue eyes shining in the dim glow of the moon, hundreds of stars shining with no streetlights or city lights to compete with. You wonder what it could have been like to meet him before all this. You wonder what could have happened had none of this happened, if the world hadn't ended and you met this kind, beautiful hitchhiker on the side of the road, eyes bright as the sky and faded green hair flying in the wind.

You wish you could have met him at a different time and place. You wish you could have had more time with him.

The hole in your stomach burns and throbs, your hand pressing lightly to try to dull the pain.

"I don't know. I don’t know if there's even a point."

Jack could be the fastest man alive, but eventually he would have to stop. Eventually, he would get caught.

"Maybe not. It's too dark anyway," he agrees, looking out at the stars. "In all likelihood one of us would probably trip and fall. Be pretty sad to make it all this way just to die from a skinned knee or a broken nose."

You let out a small laugh, though it sounds fake even to your ears.

"Yeah. Not much we can do until the sun rises."

"Guess we're crashin here tonight then, huh?" he asks, looking to you for confirmation. You agree, watching him as he turns to look back out at the darkness of the road in front of him.

"I guess it could be worse. At least the air smells nice," he says, and you agree, closing your eyes to take a deep breath, maybe one of the last you'll ever get. The wound in your abdomen still throbs, and you wish you could tell him to go. Wish you weren't so cowardly, so selfish. He shifts in the driver's seat, but you can't bare to look back at him.

"G'night, Mark," he says, and you murmur a good night back, his breathing evening out as he soon falls asleep.

You stay awake as long as you can, knowing that you won't wake up again once you fall asleep. Or, not as yourself at least. You just pray that he has enough time to get away, but you know that he probably won't. You feel tears fall again, but don't try to brush them away as you stay awake as long as you can. But eventually your eyes slide closed, and you send a silent apology to Sean as you're finally pulled under by sleep.


End file.
